Chapter II: Preface (2)

Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici often returned to Cafaggiuolo as young men, and with their friends the Pulci frequented the fairs and weekly markets of the Mugello. At one of these, Lorenzo met the heroine of that delightful country idyll _Nencia da Barberino_, “a masterpiece of true genius and humour. It can scarcely be called a parody of village life and feeling, although we cannot fail to see that the town is laughing at the country all through the exuberant stanzas, so rich in fancy, so incomparably vivid in description.”[13] Luigi Pulci imitated it in _La Istoria della Beca da Dicomano_, while his brother Luca in the _Driadeo d’Amore_ praises the rivers Sieve, Lora, Sturo and Tavaiano, and under feigned names describes the places where Lorenzo and Giuliano and the three brothers Pulci went hawking and fishing.

After the Pazzi conspiracy and the murder of Giuliano in 1476, Lorenzo sent his wife Clarice with the children and their tutor Angelo Poliziano to Cafaggiuolo for safety. Poliziano wrote to Lucrezia, who had remained in Florence with her son: “Magnifica Domina mea. The news I can send from here is that we are all well, that we have so much and such continual rain that we cannot quit the house, and that we have exchanged hunting for playing at ball, so that the children may not want for exercise.... I remain in the house by the fireside in my slippers and greatcoat, and you would take me for melancholy in person could you see me; but perhaps I am but myself after all, for I neither do nor see nor hear anything that amuses me, so much have I taken to heart our calamities; sleeping and waking they haunt me. Two days since we began to spread our wings as we heard the plague had ceased, now we are again depressed on learning that things are not yet quite settled with you. When at Florence we have some consolation—if nought else that of seeing Lorenzo return home safe. Here we are always anxious about everything; and as for myself, I declare to you I am drowned in weary laziness for the solitude in which I find myself. I say solitude, because Monsignore [probably the Bishop of Arezzo] shuts himself up in his room, where I find him sorrowful and full of thought, so that being with him increases my own melancholy; Ser Alberto del Malherba mumbles offices all day long with the children; I remain alone, and when tired of studying ring the changes on plague and war, on sorrow for the past and fear for the future, and have no one with whom to air these my phantasies. I do not find my Madonna Lucrezia here to whom I can unbosom myself and I am dying of weariness.... I commend myself unto you. Ex Cafasolo, die 18 dicembris 1478. Your servant Angelus.”

Poliziano was no favourite with the proud and unlettered Clarice, and he complained to Lorenzo about Giovanni (afterwards Pope Leo X): “His mother sets him to read the Psalter, of which I do not approve. When she does not interfere with him he makes most wonderful progress.” It ended by Clarice sending away Poliziano and engaging a priest to superintend her son’s studies. Before his birth she dreamed that she was delivered of a huge but docile lion, and his father always destined him for the Church. Soon after he was seven he received the tonsure and was declared capable of ecclesiastical preferment; whereupon the King of France made him abbot of Fonte-dolce, an appointment rapidly followed by so many others that, after enumerating them all, old Fabroni in his life of Leo X exclaims: “Bone Deus, quot in uno juvene cumulata sacerdotia.”

In April 1533, the stern old villa echoed to the laughter of a bevy of young girls who went with Caterina de’ Medici, the only daughter of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino,[14] then only fourteen years of age, to receive Margaret of Austria, the illegitimate daughter of Charles V. The poor child was but nine when she arrived in Tuscany as the affianced bride of Alessandro, Duke of Florence, whose mother was a negress, or some say a peasant woman from Collevecchio, the wife of a groom in the service of the Duke of Urbino. He was supposed to be the son either of Lorenzo himself or of the Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici (afterwards Clemente VII); and the interest taken in him by Pope Clemente, who warmly supported his election as Duke of Florence, rather points to the latter supposition. He is inscribed in the family tree as “of uncertain parentage.” Alessandro’s cruelty and licentiousness are matters of history; he left his mother to suffer dire poverty, and she is said to have died of poison administered by his orders, so that his murder by Lorenzino de’ Medici delivered the poor little Princess from a brutal husband. Lorenzino fled to Cafaggiuolo after murdering his cousin, and waited to know how the news was received in Florence. When he heard that messengers had arrived at Trebbio, another Medicean villa close to Cafaggiuolo, where Maria Salviati, widow of Giovanni de’ Medici (delle Bande Nere), and her son Cosimo lived, he left in hot haste for Venice. “It only needed that someone should begin a tumult,” writes Varchi, “when Signor Cosimo, who had been secretly warned by friends and summoned by many citizens, arrived in Florence with a small company; he being the son of Signor Giovanni, and of comely aspect, and having always shown himself of a pacific and kindly nature, it cannot be said, described, or imagined with what delight he was looked on by the people or how ardently they desired and hoped to see him Prince.”

His father’s memory probably preserved his life a few years before, for Varchi tells us, “Signor Otto da Montauto was taken up for killing Bernardo Arrighi at Prato and condemned to lose his head, but the punishment was commuted to a fine of 1000 ducats and a year’s imprisonment. But it is supposed that these rigorous measures were not taken against Signor Otto for the murder committed, but because on his return from succouring Lastra when sent on a secret mission to Trebbio to fetch Madonna Maria de’ Medici and Cosimino her son, he failed to do so; some say that having asked a peasant who was coming down from Trebbio: ‘Who is up there and what are they doing?’ The man, being intelligent and quick-witted, understood what manner of man he was, and answered with intent to frighten him: ‘Up there are the Lady Maria and the Lord Cosimo with many soldiers and all the peasants of the country round, and they are making good cheer and keep watch day and night.’ So Signor Otto would not tempt fortune. Others say he did not go because, not only do good soldiers dislike doing the work of policemen, but having begun life under the Lord Giovanni and gained his spurs with him, like all who had fought under the Lord Giovanni he worshipped his memory in a way not to be believed, and therefore was attached to his wife and his son.”

The “kindly nature” of Cosimo was only skin-deep if all the tales told of him are true, and his youngest son Don Pietro de’ Medici was distinguished for immorality. Married against his will to Eleonora, daughter of his mother’s brother Don Garcia di Toledo, he systematically neglected the young and lovely Spaniard, described as “beautiful, elegant, gracious, kindly, charming and affable; and above all with two eyes rivalling the stars in brilliancy.”[15] Evil tongues whispered that the Grand Duke’s admiration for his wife’s niece was the principal motive for her marriage with Don Pietro which ended so tragically at Cafaggiuolo. After the death of Cosimo I the name of Alessandro Gaci, a handsome youth from Castiglion Florentino, was coupled with that of Donna Eleonora, but the threats of the Grand Duke Francesco forced him to leave Florence and enter a Capuchin monastery. His successor was a Florentine, Bernardino Antinori, whose passionate admiration for the lovely princess soon became known. The lovers were imprudent; a letter fell into the hands of the Grand Duke, whose scandalous ill-treatment of his wife Joan of Austria and subserviency to every whim of the dissolute Venetian, Bianca Cappello, were the talk of Florence. He asserted that the honour of his family demanded an example and ordered Antinori to be taken to the Bargello and strangled, and his sister-in-law to be sent to rejoin her husband at Cafaggiuolo. Bidding a tearful farewell to her little son, Eleonora left Florence on the morning of the 11th July 1576 and reached the stern old villa at nightfall, where Don Pietro received her with unwonted demonstrations of affection and at supper was very merry. He insisted on accompanying her to her room, and before she could summon her women threw her on to the bed and plunged his dagger several times into her breast. She died in a few minutes imploring God to show her more mercy than she had received at the hands of men, and kneeling by the lifeless body, Don Pietro prayed to his patron saints for forgiveness and vowed he would never marry again—a vow he did not keep. Then he sat down and wrote a few lines to his brother the Grand Duke announcing the sudden death of Donna Eleonora.

The doctor’s certificate that Donna Eleonora de’ Medici had died of failure of the heart, was received in Florence with the incredulity vouchsafed to most of the sudden deaths in the Medici family. Francesco I pretended to believe it when he wrote to his brother, Cardinal Ferdinando, at Rome: “Yesternight at the fifth hour Donna Eleonora, being in bed, had so violent a stroke that she was suffocated before Don Pietro or others could apply any remedies; this has sore disturbed me, and will, I know, afflict Your Eminence. But as whatever comes from the hand of God must be borne with patience, I pray you may accept quietly the will of the Divine Majesty. This night the body will be brought from Cafaggiuolo for proper interment, of which I hereby desire to give you notice, taking advantage of the courier who has come from Spain.”

But the Grand Duke told the real story in a letter dated 16 of July, and sent to the Florentine ambassador at Madrid with orders to read it to the King of Spain. “Although in a former letter it was stated that Donna Eleonora died of failure of the heart, you are, nevertheless, to inform His Catholic Majesty that the Lord Don Pietro, our brother, took her life with his own hands for her betrayal of him in ways unbecoming a lady of high birth. This he had communicated to Don Pedro her brother, through a secretary, begging him to come here; not only did he refuse to come, but he prevented the secretary from having speech with Don Garcia (Donna Eleonora’s father). We desire that H.M. should know the truth, being determined H.M. shall be informed of all the doings of Our house, and especially of this; for if We did not lift the veil from H.M.’s eyes, it would seem to Us not to serve H.M. well and honourably. All facts shall be sent on the first opportunity so that H.M. may know with what good reason the Lord Don Pietro thus acted.”

Settimanni accuses Don Pietro of the further crime of poisoning his little son who was odious to him on account of his likeness to his mother. He also records that when, thirty-eight years after death, Donna Eleonora’s body was moved from one vault to another in San Lorenzo it was found to be perfectly preserved, and the beautiful young princess (she was but twenty-one when so foully murdered) lay as though asleep, clothed all in white with her hands crossed over the wounds in her breast.[16] Murders and sudden deaths were too common in the Medici family to deter the Grand Duke Francesco I from taking his second wife Bianca Cappello to Cafaggiuolo in 1585 with a great following of courtiers. Hearing that their favourite painter Sandrino Bronzino was painting an altarpiece for the church of Santa Maria a Olmi near Borgo San Lorenzo, they mounted their horses and went to pay a visit to the prior, Don Quintilio Rinieri. He was an old acquaintance of Bianca’s, and entreated them to do him the honour of dining with him. Don Quintilio had a fine taste in wine and some reputation as a sayer of good things, he was moreover a courtier, and before dinner was over he obtained the consent of the Grand Duchess Bianca to allow Bronzino to paint her portrait on the wall of his room. In 1871 the fresco was transferred to canvas and placed in the Uffizzi gallery. Bianca, who was then thirty-seven, sits resplendent in crimson velvet, and this, Signor Baccini thinks, is probably the only authentic portrait that exists of the “daughter of Venice.”[17]

When Cardinal Ferdinando succeeded his brother Francesco as Grand Duke, he used to spend the autumn months at Cafaggiuolo, where he could enjoy complete liberty and indulge in his passion for the chase. From an unpublished diary in three large volumes by Cesare Tinghi, one of his secretaries, and found in the National Library by Signor Baccini, we learn that Ferdinando I was very strict as to preserving his game, and punished poachers severely. He rose early and went out shooting or fishing with his gentlemen, and in the afternoon gave audiences to princes and ambassadors who were received with great magnificence. Often the peasants would be summoned to dance for the amusement of the Grand Duchess Christine and her children, and sent home rejoicing with presents of ribbons, scarves and nick-nacks; or the soldiers from San Martino, the fortress begun by Cosimo I, and finished by Ferdinando, which guarded the entrance to the Mugello, would execute military games and sham battles.

Cafaggiuolo was not much frequented by the Medici after the time of Ferdinando I, and only occasional references to it are found in the archives. The family of Lorraine preferred the villas nearer Florence, though they sometimes passed a night there on their way to Austria, but when Ferdinando III returned to Tuscany in 1814 after the fall of Napoleon, the Florentine nobility rode out to Cafaggiuolo to meet him and the whole of the Mugello was illuminated in his honour.

Before leaving “the old den among the hills” its majolica ware must be mentioned, over which such bitter controversy has raged; some writers, like the late M. Jacquemart, over-estimating its antiquity and importance, others, like Dr Malagola and Professor Argnani, asserting that it never existed and that the pieces signed _Cafaggiuolo_ (more or less ill-spelt) were made by a family of Faenza, the Cà Fagioli (House of Fagioli). Some documents, printed also in the _Athenæum_ (Dec. 1899, p. 872) prove that as early as 1485 several kilns for common pottery, _stoviglie_, and for bricks were in existence near and at Cafaggiuolo itself. Signor Baccini[18] cites others in a list of the possessions of Cosimo I, drawn up in 1566, which show that either some of these _stovigliai_ had become _vasellai_, _i.e._ makers of vases and decorative ware, or that the kilns were then tenanted by artistic potters. Two of the kilns, with a house and _botega_, stood near the villa, where now are the stables, and both were rented by a Jacopo di Stefano. Mr Drury E. Fortnum, in his magnificent work on majolica published by the Clarendon Press, gives a long list of Cafaggiuolo ware from the earliest dated piece known of 1507, and the marks on the most characteristic pieces, such as the letters P. and S. with a paraph, or a plain or barred P., while others have a monogram of J. P. C. These marks have apparently not been explained, but Signor Baccini gives good reasons for supposing them to be the initials of a family who went from Montelupo to Cafaggiuolo to manufacture the famous _bocali_ or measuring jugs, beginning with a certain Piero; his son was Stefano di Piero and his grandson the Jacopo di Stefano who in 1566 tenanted the house, shop and kilns of Cafaggiuolo.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] The name Cafaggio, or Cafaggiuolo (Cafagium), meaning a wooded estate surrounded with a fence or ditch, is often met with in Tuscany, and dates from old Lombard times.

[10] Bosco a’ Frati is a monastery said to have been founded in the time of St Francis of Assisi by the Ubaldini family. It was here that St Bonaventura received the cardinal’s hat sent to him by Gregory X. in 1273. The messengers found him with his sleeves rolled up washing dishes in the scullery; turning round he pointed to a tree near by and bid them hang the hat on a bough until he had finished his work.

[11] The Pulci owned a villa “Il Palagio” at Cavallina a few miles from Cafaggiuolo.

[12] Mona or Monna is an abbreviation of Madonna, Mia Donna, and all well-born women were thus addressed. It corresponds to the French Madame.

[13] J. A. Symonds. _Renaissance in Italy._ _Italian Literature_, p. 381.

[14] Leo X deprived the adopted son of Guidobaldo di Montefeltro, Francesco Maria Della Rovere, of the Dukedom of Urbino in favour of his nephew Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1516.

[15] _Diario di Firenze._ A. Lapini.

[16] See Settimanni. Cronaca M.S. all’ anno 1608.

[17] See _Le Ville Medicee in Mugello_. Guiseppe Baccini. Firenze, 1897.

[18] _Opus cit._

VILLA DI CAREGGI

The three great Medicean villas, Careggi, Cafaggiuolo and Poggio Cajano, have been so often sung by poets and celebrated by historians, that to all who love Italy their names are household words.

Careggi lies about two miles north-west of Florence, on what old Varchi calls “the most delightful hill named Montughi, after the ancient and noble family of the Ughi, whereon are innumerable villas of splendid construction; and most splendid of them all, the new Careggi built by Cosimo the elder.”[19] The name Careggi is derived from the Latin _Campus Regis_, and Roman remains abound in the neighbourhood. Near by was the Via Cassia, leading from Rome to Pistoja and Lucca, and some of the inscriptions found relating to it have been placed in the courtyard of the church, San Stefano in Pane de Arcora.[20]

On the 17th June 1417, Cosimo de’ Medici bought a country house at Careggi from Tommaso Lippi for 800 florins. “A palace with a courtyard, a loggia, a well, archways, dove-cotes, a tower, a walled kitchen-garden, two peasant houses and arable land, vineyards, olive-groves, and spinnies, in the parish of Careggi.” Thus runs the contract.

Cosimo called in his friend and favourite architect, Michelozzo Michelozzi, to rebuild the villa, and no doubt remembering the place of his birth—the strong castle of Trebbio in the Mugello—he ordered that Careggi should become a castle with battlements, covered galleries round the upper part, a tower, a drawbridge, and high walls all round the pleasure grounds.

The huge pile of Careggi lies embosomed among fine cedars, pines and firs; unfortunately the villa has been painted a dirty chocolate brown, which detracts considerably from its beauty. But the entrance hall is fine, and the great straight staircase leading from the open courtyard up to the first floor is most imposing.

The first room at the top of the staircase is a large hall with a huge grey stone fireplace. How one would like to conjure up the magnificent Lorenzo and his friends; to listen entranced while Luigi Pulci declaimed a Canto of Morgante, or Messer Angelo Poliziano recited a Ballata; or hear the learned Greek Argyropoulos discuss philosophy with Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, Bernardo Rucellai, Leo Battista Alberti and Cristofano Landino, while Michelangelo Buonarroti sat by listening, his head resting on one hand like one of his own prophets.

Out of the big hall one goes through three or four rooms on to a loggia facing west, with a brilliantly gay ceiling painted by Poccetti. Here, no doubt, the Academicians sat in the long summer evenings looking down on the garden with its fountains, and on the oak woods crowning the neighbouring hills.

The last room on the south side of the house (on the first floor) was probably where Lorenzo de’ Medici died, and not the one generally pointed out to strangers. On an ancient plan of the villa the end room is found marked “the room of Messer Lorenzo,” and the small closet opening out of it, with a spiral staircase in the thickness of the wall leading down into the courtyard, is indicated as “the study of Messer Lorenzo.”

From the courtyard one enters a fine vaulted and frescoed room leading into a loggia under the one painted by Poccetti. This has been closed in by glass windows, and here Mr Watts, while staying with Lord Holland, who rented Careggi when he was minister to the Tuscan court in 1845, painted a large fresco of the murder of Piero Leoni, doctor to Lorenzo. It is a fine work with daring and successful foreshortening.

From the covered gallery round the top of the villa the view is splendid. To the south is “the delightful hill Montughi,” dotted with villas, to most of which is attached some story of love or bloodshed; then the towers and palaces of fair Florence backed with line upon line of blue and violet mountains. Looking westward we can follow the track of the Arno flowing down to the sea, until lost behind the hill on which stands Artimino, another Medici villa. The little town of Prato shines white in the sun, and if the day be at all clear Pistoja can be seen, with the rugged Apennines and the white peaks of the Carrara mountains in the distance. To the north, shielding Careggi from the harsh north wind, rises Monte de’ Vecchi, so-called because the great family of Vecchi, or Vecchietti, whose palaces stood on the site of the Campidoglio in the centre of Florence and were destroyed by the Ghibellines after the battle of Monteaperti, possessed villas and estates on its slopes.

At Careggi, Cosimo the elder passed what time he could spare from the affairs of state, surrounded by a galaxy of artists and men of letters such as the world has seldom seen. Among the former were Brunelleschi, Donatello, Michelozzo Michelozzi, Ghiberti, Verrocchio, Paolo Uccello, Luca della Robbia, Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi and Masaccio. Among the latter, Marsilio Ficino, Niccolò de’ Niccoli, Cristofano Landino, Lionardo Aretino (Bruni), Carlo Aretino (Marsuppini), Poggio Bracciolini, Ambrogio Traversari and Giannozzo Manetti.

To Ficino Cosimo gave a villa (la Fontanella)[21] close to Careggi, and named him President of the Platonic Academy which he founded, having been convinced of the importance of Platonic studies by Giorgius Gemistus, a native of Byzantium, who came to Florence in 1438 in the train of the Emperor Palaelogus. Niccolò de’ Niccoli “censor of the Latin tongue,” as Lionardo Aretino called him, was one of the Academicians. He spent his whole fortune in buying MSS., and his house, stored with treasures, was open to all strangers, students and artists. Cristofano Landino, known for his commentary on Dante, and Lionardo Aretino (Bruni), Chancellor of the Republic of Florence, were also Academicians. The translations of the latter from Greek were celebrated for their sound scholarship and pure latinity, while his diplomatic letters were regarded as models, and his public speeches were compared to those of Pericles. When he walked abroad a train of scholars and foreigners attended him, and when he died the Priors of Florence decreed him a public funeral in Santa Croce, “after the manner of the ancients.” Carlo Aretino (Marsuppini), another member of the Platonic Academy, succeeded Bruni as Chancellor; an omnivorous reader and possessed of an extraordinary memory, he formed a great contrast to Niccoli, who had introduced him to Cosimo. Vespasiano describes Niccoli as “of a most fair presence, lively, with a smile ever on his lips, and very pleasant in his talk”; whereas Marsuppini was grave in manner, taciturn, and given to melancholy.

Poggio Bracciolini was another of the great scholars attracted to Florence by the fame of Cosimo’s liberality. He was a friend of Ambrogio Traversari, whose cell in the convent of the Angeli was the meeting-place of learned men. Giannozzo Manetti, the Hebrew scholar, had studied Greek under Traversari, and his Latin was so perfect that Bruni is said to have been jealous of him. The Republic sent him as her ambassador to various Italian courts, and there is a good story in the Commentario, that “when he was speaking at Naples the King was so entranced he did not even brush the flies from his face.” At last Manetti roused the jealousy of the Medicean party and ended his life in exile. “These men,” writes Symonds, “formed the literary oligarchy who surrounded Cosimo de’ Medici, and through their industry and influence restored the studies of antiquity at Florence.” Cosimo was a Mæcenas worth serving. For his own family he built the great palace in Via Larga (afterwards Riccardi, now the Prefecture), he restored or rebuilt the villas of Cafaggiuolo, Trebbio and Careggi, while he expended 500,000 golden florins on public buildings. During the last years of his life he seldom moved from Careggi, and the following letter, written by his son Piero to Lorenzo and Giuliano about their grandfather four days before his death, gives a pleasant picture of the private life of the Medici family:—

“I wrote to you the day before yesterday how much worse Cosimo was; it appears to me that he is gradually sinking, and he thinks the same himself. On Tuesday evening he would have no one in his room save only Mona Contessina [Cosimo’s wife] and myself. He began by recounting all his past life, then he touched upon the government of the city, and then on its commerce, and at last spoke of the management of the private possessions of our family and of what concerns you two; taking comfort that you had good wits, and bidding me educate you well so that you might be of help to me. Two things he deplored. Firstly, that he had not done as much as he had wished or could have done; secondly, that he left me in such poor health and with much irksome business. Then he said he would make no will, not having made one whilst Giovanni[22] was alive seeing us always united in true love, amity and esteem; and that when it pleased God to so order it he desired to be buried without pomp or show, and reminded me of his often expressed wish to be interred in San Lorenzo. All this he said with much method and prudence, and with a courage that was marvellous to behold; adding that his life had been a long one and that he was ready and content to depart whensoever it pleased God. Yestermorn he left his bed, and caused himself to be carefully dressed. The Priors of San Marco, of San Lorenzo and of the Badia were present, and he spoke the responses as though in perfect health. Then being asked the articles of faith, he repeated them word by word, made his confession, and took the Holy Sacrament with more devotion than can be described, having first asked pardon of all present. These things have raised my courage and my hope in God Almighty, and although according to the flesh I am sorrowful, yet, seeing the greatness of his soul and how well disposed, I am in part content that his end should be thus. Yesterday he was pretty well and also during the night, but on account of his great age I have small hope of his recovery. Cause prayers to be said for him by the Monks of the Wood, and bestow alms as seems good to you, praying God to leave him to us for a while, if such be for the best. And you, who are young, take example and take your share of care and trouble as God has ordained, and make up your minds to be men, your condition and the present case demanding that of you lads. And above all take heed to everything that can add to your honour and be of use to you, because the time has come when it is necessary that you should rely on yourselves, and live in the fear of God, and hope all will go well. Of what happens to Cosimo I will advise you. We are expecting a doctor from Milan, but I have more hope in Almighty God than in aught else. No more at present. Careggi, the 26 July 1464.”

Cosimo died on the 1st August 1464; he was buried with sovereign honours in the sacristy he had built in San Lorenzo, and on his tomb was inscribed, by public desire, “Cosimo Pater Patriae.” Piero, his son, succeeded quietly to the honours and power of his father. He had met and loved Lucrezia Tornabuoni at Careggi, her father having a villa close by,[23] and Cosimo sanctioned the marriage and regarded Lucrezia as a daughter. She was a gifted woman, handsome and virtuous, a poetess, and at the same time devoted to all her household cares. Piero de’ Medici died only five years after his father of a fit of the gout at Careggi on the 3rd December 1469, and was succeeded by his brilliant son Lorenzo the Magnificent.

“Lorenzo,” writes John Addington Symonds, “was a man of marvellous variety and range of mental power. He possessed one of those rare natures, fitted to comprehend all knowledge and to sympathise with the most diverse forms of life. While he never for one moment relaxed his grasp on politics, among philosophers he passed for a sage; among men of letters for an original and graceful poet; among scholars for a Grecian, sensitive to every nicety of Attic idiom; among artists for an amateur gifted with refined discernment and consummate taste. Pleasure-seekers knew in him the libertine, who jousted with the boldest, danced and masqueraded with the merriest, sought adventures in the streets at night, and joined the people in their May-day games and Carnival festivities. The pious extolled him as an author of devotional lauds and mystery plays, a profound theologian, a critic of sermons. He was no less famous for his jokes and repartees than for his pithy apothegms and maxims; as good a judge of cattle as of statues; as much at home in the bosom of his family as in the riot of an orgy; as ready to discourse on Plato as to plan a campaign or to plot the death of a dangerous citizen.”[24]

“What other men call study and hard toil, for thee shall be pastime;” sings Poliziano, “wearied with deeds of state, to this thou hast recourse, and dost address the vigour of thy well-worn powers to song; blest in thy mental gifts, blest to be able thus to play so many parts, to vary thus the great cares of thy all-embracing mind, and weave so many divers duties into one.”[25] Angelo Poliziano, “honour and glory of Montepulciano” as Pulci calls him, who thus sounds the praises of Lorenzo, was born in 1454. His name, famous in Italian literature, is a latinised version of his birthplace, Montepulciano. As a boy of ten he entered the University of Florence, and studied under Landino, Argyropoulos, Andronicus Kallistos and Ficino. At thirteen he published Latin letters, at seventeen Greek poems, and edited Catullus when he was eighteen. Lorenzo de’ Medici received the young student into his own household, and made him tutor to his children. Ugly and misshapen, he squinted and had an enormous nose, but his voice was wonderfully sweet and melodious, and his eloquence great. Men of learning visited Florence on purpose to see him, and he complains (in a letter to Hieronymus Donatus, May 1480), “does a man want a motto for a ring, an inscription for his bedroom or a device for his plate, or even for his pots and pans, he runs like all the world to Poliziano.”

Another famous frequenter of Careggi, Pico della Mirandola, is thus described by Poliziano:—

“Nature seemed to have showered on this man, or hero, all her gifts. He was tall and finely moulded, from his face a something of divinity shone forth. Acute, and gifted with prodigious memory, in his studies he was indefatigable, in his style perspicuous and eloquent. You could not say whether his talents or his moral qualities conferred on him the greater lustre. Familiar with all branches of philosophy and the master of many languages, he stood on high above the reach of praise.” Pico della Mirandola showed remarkable abilities at a very early age. His mother, a niece of Boiardo the knightly poet of “Orlando Innamorato,” sent him at the age of fourteen to Bologna. There he mastered the humanities and what was taught of mathematics, logic, philosophy and oriental languages, and then went to Paris, the headquarters of scholastic theology. His memory was wonderful, a single reading served to fix the language and the matter of the text on his mind for ever. Pico was about twenty when he came to Florence, and his beauty, noble manners and great learning made him the idol of society. But every year he inclined more and more to grave and abstruse studies, and as Symonds notes: “at last the Prince was merged in the philosopher, the man of letters in the mystic.”[26]

In a letter to Jacopo Antiquario Poliziano, after describing the malady from which Lorenzo had been suffering for some time, continues: “The day before his death, being at his villa of Careggi, he grew so weak that all hope of saving him vanished. Perceiving this, like a wise man, he called before all else for the confessor to purge himself of his past sins. This same confessor told me afterwards that he marvelled to see with what courage and constancy Lorenzo prepared himself for death; how well he ordered all things pertaining thereunto, and with what prudence and religious feeling he thought on the life to come. Towards midnight, while he was quietly meditating, he was informed that the priest, bearing the Holy Sacrament, had arrived. Rousing himself, he exclaimed, ‘It shall never be said that my Lord, who created and saved me, shall come to me—in my room—raise me I beg of you, raise me quickly, so that I may go and meet Him.’ Saying this he raised himself as well as he could, and supported by his servants advanced to meet the priest in the outer room, there crying he knelt.” Poliziano here gives the text of a long prayer which Lorenzo recited and then continues: “these and other things he said sobbing, while all around cried bitterly. At length the priest ordered that he should be raised from the ground and carried to bed, so as to receive the Viaticum in more comfort. For some time he resisted, but at last out of respect to the priest he obeyed. In bed, repeating almost the same prayer and with much gravity and devotion, he received the body and blood of Christ. Then he devoted himself to consoling his son Pietro, for the others were away, and exhorted him to bear this law of necessity with constancy; feeling sure the aid of Heaven would be vouchsafed to him, as it had been to himself in many and divers occasions, if he only acted wisely. Meanwhile your Lorenzo, the doctor from Pavia, arrived; most learned as it seemed to me, but summoned too late to be of any use; yet to do something he ordered various precious stones to be pounded together in a mortar, for I know not what kind of medicine. Lorenzo thereupon asked the servants what that doctor was doing in his room and what he was preparing; and when I answered that he was composing a remedy to comfort his intestines he recognised my voice and looking kindly, as was his wont, ‘Oh Angiolo,’ he said, ‘art thou here?’ and raising his languid arms took both my hands and pressed them tightly. I could not stifle my sobs or stay my tears, though I tried hard to hide them by turning my face away. But he showed no emotion and continued to press my hands between his. When he saw that I could not speak for crying, quite naturally he loosed my hands and I ran into the adjoining room where I could give free vent to my grief and to my tears. Then drying my eyes I returned, and as soon as he saw me he called me to him and asked what Pico della Mirandola was doing. I replied that Pico had remained in town, fearing to molest him with his presence. ‘And I,’ said Lorenzo, ‘but for the fear that the journey here might be irksome to him, would be most glad to see him and speak to him for the last time before I leave you all.’ I asked if I should send for him. ‘Certainly, and with all speed,’ answered he. This I did, and Pico came and sat near the bed, while I leaned against it by his knees in order to hear the languid voice of my lord for the last time. With what goodness, with what courtesy, I may say with what caresses, Lorenzo received him. First he asked his pardon for thus disturbing him, begging him to look upon it as a sign of the friendship—the love—he bore him; assuring him that he died more willingly after seeing so dear a friend. Then introducing, as was his wont, pleasant and familiar sayings, he joked also with us. ‘I wish,’ he said to Pico, ‘that death had spared me until your library had been complete.’ Pico had hardly left the room when Fra Girolamo (Savonarola) of Ferrara, a man celebrated for his doctrine and his sanctity and an excellent preacher, came in. To his exhortations to remain firm in his faith, and to live in future, if Heaven granted him life, free from crime; or if God so willed it, to receive death willingly; Lorenzo replied that he was firm in his religion, that his life would always be guided by it, and that nothing could be sweeter to him than death if such was the divine will. Fra Girolamo then turned to go, when Lorenzo said, ‘Oh, father, before going deign to give me thy benediction.’ Then bowing his head, immersed in piety and religion, he repeated the words and the prayers of the friar, without attending to the grief, now openly shown, of his familiars. It seemed as though all save Lorenzo were going to die, so calm was he. He gave no signs of anxiety or of sorrow; even in that extreme moment he showed his usual strength of mind and fortitude. The doctors who stood round him, not to seem idle, worried him with their remedies and assistance: he accepted and submitted to everything they suggested, not because he thought it would save him, but in order not to offend anyone, even in death. To the last he had such mastery over himself that he joked about his own death. Thus when given something to eat and asked how he liked it he answered, ‘As well as a dying man can like anything.’ He embraced us all tenderly and humbly asked pardon if, during his illness, he had caused annoyance to anyone. Then disposing himself to receive extreme unction he recommended his soul to God. The gospel containing the passion of Christ was then read, and he showed that he understood by moving his lips, or raising his languid eyes, or sometimes moving his fingers. Gazing upon a silver crucifix inlaid with precious stones and kissing it from time to time, he expired....”

The other accounts of the last interview of Lorenzo with Savonarola by various authors—Pico della Mirandola, Cinozzi, Burlamacchi, Barsanti, Razzi, Fra Marco della Casa, etc.—give the more generally accepted story that Lorenzo sent for Savonarola, and said he wished to confess to him. He deplored three great sins: the sack of Volterra; the dowry monies taken from the Monte delle Fanciulle, whereby so many girls were driven to a life of shame; and the blood shed after the Pazzi conspiracy. The friar told him that three things were required of him. “Firstly, a lively faith in the mercy of God.” “I have that,” said Lorenzo. “Secondly, to restore what you have unjustly taken, and to bid your sons make restitution.” This, after some moments of hesitation, Lorenzo also acceded to. Then Savonarola drew himself up to his full height and said, “Lastly, to restore to Florence her liberty.” Lorenzo turned his head away and Savonarola departed without hearing his confession and without giving him absolution. Professor Villari, who may be supposed to understand the manners and motives of his countrymen better than foreigners, does not believe that Savonarola would have gone to Careggi save at the express desire of Lorenzo, who sent for him in order to confess his sins and receive absolution from a man he knew to be honest. Cinozzi gives the words of Savonarola, stating that the conversation was a preliminary to the confession which was never made. He adds: “These words were repeated to me by Fra Silvestro, who died with his superior Fra Ieronimo, and who, as I well believe, had them and heard them from Fra Ieronimo’s own lips.” Professor Villari considers that Poliziano would not have dared to make a genuine report of the scene (supposing he saw it), in order not to cast a slur on the memory of his patron and benefactor, and to avoid giving offence to the Medicean party.

Various versions also exist of the death of Pier Leoni, who evidently was what we should call the trusted family doctor of the Medici; for when Lorenzo’s daughter Magdalena, married to Francesco Cybo, son of Innocent III, was so ill at Rome, she sent an express messenger to her father to beg him to send Maestro Leoni to see her. Poliziano declares that Piero Leoni killed himself in despair at not being able to save Lorenzo; Piero Ricci (Petrus Crinitus), a contemporary author, also records that he drowned himself in a well near Florence, but other accounts say that he was murdered by some of Lorenzo’s people, who suspected him, unjustly, of poisoning their master. Enemies of the Medici went so far as to accuse Piero de’ Medici of inducing him to administer poison to his father, and then of drowning him in the well of the courtyard at Careggi.

In 1494 the Medici were expelled from Florence and an attempt was made to reconstitute a commonwealth upon the model of Venice. But the internal elements of discord were too potent. The Medici were recalled, again to be expelled in 1527. “Two years later Dante and Lorenzo da Castiglione and a number of youths went in hot haste,” writes Varchi, “and set fire to the villas of Careggi and Castello; the latter, however, did not burn easily, and fearing lest the enemy’s forces should cut off their retreat they fell back. So one of Signor Cosimo’s labourers was enabled to saw some beams in half and put out the fire. They also set fire to the palace of Jacopo Salviati, which was burnt, as well as Careggi.”

Luckily the thick walls of the fine old villa defied the flames, and the first care of Alessandro de’ Medici was to restore it to its pristine splendour; but he was murdered by his cousin Lorenzino before he had time to finish the work. The Grand Duke Ferdinando II, had an especial affection for Careggi, and attempted to resuscitate the Platonic Academy which once flourished there, but in vain. All he could do was to commemorate it in a fresco in the Pitti palace, which represents Plato surrounded by the illustrious men who had formed part of it—

“Mira qui di Careggi all’ aure amene
Marsilio, e il Pico, e cento egregj spirti,
E di, s’ all’ ombre degli Elisj mirti
Tanti n’ ebber giammai Tebe, o Atene.”

(Behold here in the soft air of Careggi, Marsilio, and Pico, and a hundred men of learning, and say whether at Thebes or Athens there were as many in the shade of the Elysian myrtles) is the inscription.

In 1779 Careggi was sold to Vincenzo Orsi for 31,000 scudi. In 1848 it again changed hands and was bought by Mr Sloane, who left it to Count Boutourline, from whose family the present owner, M. Segré, bought the villa a few years ago.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Benedetto Varchi. _Storia Florentina._ Lib. IX. p. 251 F. Mazzei in a pamphlet, _La Macine a Montughi_, gives another derivation; he says that in 1100 the Marchioness Villa left large estates to her son Ugone in this district, and thence the hill was called _Montem Hugonis_, corrupted into Montui by the common people and into Montughi by writers.

[20] Moreni. _Contorni di Firense._ Vol. I. p. 45, _et seq._

[21] Now belonging to Mr Mason.

[22] Cosimo’s favourite son, who died 1463.

[23] Villa Lemmi. The frescoes by Botticelli, now in the Louvre, were discovered there.

[24] John Addington Symonds. _Renaissance in Italy._ _The Revival of Learning_, p. 320.

[25] Angelo Poliziano. _Carmina_, etc., p. 179.

[26] J. A. Symonds. _Renaissance in Italy._ _The Revival of Learning_, p. 331.

By MICHELOZZI.

(_Villa di Cafaggiuolo_).]

By NICCOLÒ FIORENTINO.

(_Villa di Coreggi_).]

By ANONIMO.

(_Villa Medici_).]

VILLA DI RUSCIANO

About a mile outside the great three-storied gateway of San Niccolò stands the old brown villa of Rusciano, which even in the days of Sacchetti had the reputation of changing masters more frequently than any other in Tuscany. It is first mentioned in 785, when Charlemagne is said to have granted the estate to the church of San Miniato a Monte; three centuries later Pope Nicholas II, gave it to the hospital of St Eusebius, popularly known as San Sebbo; then it belonged to two sisters, Buoninsegna and Princia, who in 1267 sold the house and lands to the nuns of San Jacopo in Pian di Ripoli. After passing through several other hands it was bought by Luca Pitti, who crowned the beautiful hill with what Vasari calls “a luxurious and superb palace,” built, or rather adapted and enlarged for him in 1434 by Brunelleschi, to render it a fitting residence for one who was Gonfalonier of Florence and at the height of his prosperity.

Herr Cornel von Fabriczy[27] considers that only the eastern side of the villa is Brunelleschi’s work, the western being the original building, while the southern façade dates from late in the sixteenth century. One of the glories of Rusciano, much written about by critics, is a most beautiful window looking into the courtyard, but lately covered in. It is said by some to be by Brunelleschi, but the exaggerated consoles ornamented with acanthus leaves, and the pillars at the sides with Corinthian capitals, are not like the work of the great master. The garlands of flowers at the sides, tied in here and there, remind one of those on the monument to Marsuppini by Desiderio da Settignano, as does the delicate frieze at the top. Herr von Fabriczy suggests that this lovely window, which recalls those of the palaces at Urbino and at Gubbio, may perhaps have been designed by Luciano da Laurana, architect to Federigo di Montefeltre, to whom, as we shall see, the villa belonged for a short time. Anyhow this one richly ornamented piece of architecture contrasts strangely with the absolute simplicity, almost amounting to bareness, of everything else in the courtyard. Dr Carl von Stegmann, in his _Architekten der Renaissance_ thinks the frieze and the shape of the capitals are in the style of Desiderio da Settignano, while the garlands of flowers remind him more of the work of Benedetto da Majano. The rooms of the villa are of huge size, and many still retain their fine old wooden ceilings, gigantic beams resting on simply-shaped consoles with curved outlines.

Luca Pitti would have been a happier man had he taken to heart the wise words of Cosimo de’ Medici. “You,” said Cosimo, “strive towards the indefinite, I towards the definite; you aspire to reach the heavens with your ladder, I place mine on the earth so that I may not climb so high as to fall: and if I desire that the honour and reputation of my house should surpass yours, it seems to me but just and natural that I should favour rather mine own than what belongs to you. Nevertheless let us do as big dogs, which meeting, sniff one at the other and then, both having teeth, separate and go their ways: you to attend to your concerns, I to see after mine own.” But the character of Luca was correctly gauged by that acute and charming lady, Alessandra Macinghi, married to a Strozzi, who calls him, in her letters to her exiled sons after their father’s death which give so vivid a picture of what wives and mothers endured in the good old times, “a vain ambitious man and a weathercock, moreover badly surrounded.” After intriguing against the Medici, and even plotting to assassinate Cosimo’s son Piero, Luca Pitti abandoned the anti-Medicean faction and accepted pardon at the hands of Piero, after which his old friends scorned him and avoided meeting him in the streets.

In the summer of 1472 the Gonfalonier of Florence, Tanai de’ Nerli, received the Captain-General of the Florentine army, Count Federigo di Montefeltre, outside the city gates and escorted him, amid the acclamations of the citizens, to the Piazza, where the magistrates thanked him for his services in conquering rebellious Volterra, and presented him with a richly caparisoned charger and a silver helmet studded with jewels and chased in gold by Pollajuolo, with Hercules trampling on a griffin (the device of Volterra) as its crest. The grateful Republic also bought Rusciano of Luca Pitti and bestowed it on their victorious general together with the freedom of the city. But he does not seem to have inhabited his Florentine villa long, for in the following year it was let to Giuliano Gondi, and towards the end of the fifteenth century Federigo’s successor, Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino, sold it to the Frescobaldi. After this Rusciano changed hands every few years and was owned by the Covoni, Usimbardi, Capponi, Gerini and many other less illustrious Florentine families, until in 1825 it came into the possession of an Englishman, Mr Baring, and after three more sales the noble old villa now belongs to Baron von Stumm.

The Baron is a master in the art of landscape gardening, and with a northerner’s love for trees has transformed the grounds into a veritable earthly paradise, whence lovely views of Florence, framed by rare conifers and bays, are like so many glimpses of a fairy city. When seen on a morning with deep snow lying on every mountain, while a pale tinge of colour among the vineyards tells of coming spring in the valley of the Arno, and the city, usually so brown and strongly defined upon the river banks, shines white as though reflecting the dazzling snow peaks around, one is tempted to exclaim with Rogers,

“Of all the fairest cities of the Earth
None is so fair as Florence. ’Tis a gem
Of purest ray.”

All the town lies below us, but unlike the vast unbroken bird’s-eye view from Bellosguardo or San Miniato, here we only feel her presence, and while listening to the midday bells we see, between two clumps of slender bamboo, Palazzo Vecchio looming like some enchanter’s castle out of the thick atmosphere and suffused with rosy hues. The mysterious feeling of the building is enhanced, for the bay and olive trees hide the houses around it and nothing of the modern town is visible.

Such a city, seen from a terrace where a column of purest marble makes the rose tints of the sky more clearly felt, may well inspire her people to weave legends, even in this century of ours, as to her having been built by angels in the night. Between the cypresses the Duomo, sometimes so russet brown above the city it is guarding, to-day is toned and mellowed in the winter sunlight, and the downward markings of its cupola shine like ribs of alabaster. Whiter still and fairer rises the campanile “coloured like a morning cloud, and chased like a sea shell.”

The terraced garden of Rusciano, where granite columns with capitals encircled by dolphins rise amidst palms and magnolias, lies on the southern side of the villa facing the heights of Monticci.

A watch-tower on the slopes, a little village in the plain with pointed bell-tower rising above the jutting roofs of peasant houses low-lying among the fruit trees, hills palely outlined, their cypress-covered summits seen against still paler distance, pine trees along the valley wreathed in mist and nearer, olive trees reflecting, like so many mirrors, the radiant hues of the morning sunlight on each of their small pointed leaves—all these things and many more we see from the garden of Rusciano.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] _Filippo Brunelleschi, sein Leben und seine Werke_, von Cornel von Fabriczy. Stuttgard, 1892.

VILLA DI POGGIO IMPERIALE